Midweek in Monda

After the Wednesday Matins, Eucharist and coffee morning, Peter took Clare and I to the newly purchased Chaplaincy house to look around. If all goes according to plan, I`ll be moving in there at the end of February. It´s a generous sized family home with good views of the sierra de Mijas on the side of the house where the study will be. I took lots of photos and later made them into a Powerpoint show so that others interested can see what it´s like before the housewarming, whenever that will be.

Thursday we drove up to Coin for their fortnightly Eucharist, and over coffee afterwards we started planning a Shrove Tuesday Quiet Day to accompany the Lenten day of prayer scheduled to take place at Caroline´s house. Then Clare and I drove on to Monda to look around and have lunch. I had hoped to find the castillo hotel restuarant open, at the end of the very steep climb up to it, but the place was closed for renovation. It was most gratifying while we were up there to see a man riding a mule returning for lunch after a morning with his pruning shears in one of the orchards on the rugged hillside. There are places a quad bike or a four by four still can´t go nearly as well as a four footed friend.

We lunched on beer and tapas, incredibly cheaply al fresco, at a bar in the square overlooking a fountain and public wash house several hundred years old in its present form. The Fuente de la Jaula is one of four locally, whose origins and water engineering date back to the time of the Moors, as does the castillo. We couldn´t linger long, as I was due in Fuengirola´s Rosario parish church for another Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Service at five. To my delight there were a hundred people present for a service once more in English and in Spanish. I accepted the challenge to read some of the prayers of intercession in Spanish, since John the Scottish Presbyterian locum pastor, could only read in his contribution in English. It was a first for me, and I was surprised at bringing it off without embarrassing myself. Shades of ecumenism in Italian during my stay in Taormina last year but one!

After the service we dined out at la Vieja Escuela restaurant, where I´d eaten with Bill the day of my arrival. With a gentle bottle of rioja to accompany our fish dishes, it was another pleasant experience to conclude a satisfying day.

Monday Ecumenism

I got up early and wrote a homily for this evening's service before breakfast, much to my surprise. We then did some food shopping, and then drove up to Mijas to show Clare around for the first time and have lunch. The sun shone but it was fairly cold up there, but not impossible to sit and eat outdoors with a view down to the sea ten kilometres below us. We returned to Fuengirola for the service at five o'clock. There were twenty of us present and several had been at the service last night as well. 

It wasn't a grand affair, but it was none the less a worthwhile opportunity to reflect again on the extraordinary progress the churches have made in forging a common witness to faith over my lifetime in ministry. Healing the wounds caused by past conflicts between Christians is important to reconciliation, shaping the future of mission around the challenges facing all believers as a result of global rapid change in the past few decades is another matter altogether.

I wonder if I shall live long enough to see really substantial progress on this front as well?

   

Ecumenism in Malaga

Saturday was another overcast rainy day, but it didn't prevent us from walking the length of the promenade to the Castillo de Somillo. We stopped soaking wet in the Central Bar opposite Fuengirola bus station on our way back to have something to eat. Clare had tea and tapas, I had a racion of excellent paella and a beer. It's a cheery sort of place with exuberant conversations going on between staff and regulars. It lifted our spirits while the rain cleared for some weekend shopping and the walk home. By the time I went over to the office to print off my sermon for tomorrow, the sky was clearing.

Sunday morning was clear and bright for the early morning trip to Benalmadena to celebrate the Eucharist for a congregation of twenty two. Then, back to Los Boliches for the second Eucharist with a congregation of fifty five, the largest assembly since I first came here, reflecting the comings and goings of those who don't live here permanently. We had a quiet afternoon relaxing after a late lunch, to prepare for an evening outing to Malaga Cathedral for the annual Archdiocesan ecumenical service in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, presided over by the Bishop, Don Jesus Catala Ibanez.

We were collected for the journey from the Recinto Feriale by a coach organised by the local Lux Mundi group, the Catholic organisation which takes the lead in ecumenical affairs and social action. It contained several dozen congregation members of some of the different churches in Fuengirola, which is richly blessed with communities of Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Scottish as well as English people.

We arrived early enough before the service to allow participants to have a snack at the bar in the square in front of the Cathedral West end. Clergy were advised to go into the Cathedral early, find the sacristy and get robed and briefed for the service. The seven o'clock evening Mass was just about the start when I arrived with one of the Danish Pastors and the Scottish Church locum Pastor, and we were taken off to a room at the north west corner of the Cathedral, lined with portraits of previous Bishops of the diocese, for the duration of the Mass, and then collected as other began to arrive nearer the start time.

There were twenty clergy seated together up on the steps of the main altar during the service, one half of them Catholic and the other half representing non-Catholic churches - interestingly, no Orthodox, no Evangelical, nor Pentecostal representatives among them. The order of service, in Spanish and English, with additional contributions in German and Scandinavian languages  was devised by a Canadian ecumenical group. It involved lots of participation by laity as well as clergy. Ther Bishop preached and is homily was rendered in English by the organiser of Lux Mundi. Later, I learned that the Bishop handed her a copy of his address in Spanish just before the service. From where I was sitting she looked as if she was reading from an English text, whereas in fact, she was translating it live! An impressive feat for someone who wasn't a professional interpretor.

With a couple of hundred people present, sitting in the sanctuary gazing into the vast vaulted depths of the Cathedral roof (originally constructed as a mosque) was an impressive experience, so different from visiting as a tourist back in November. The service made reference to the importance of the Second Vatican Council and how it led to a transformation in relations between the Roman Catholic Church and others. I couldn't help but reflect on how significant an influence the Council had been on me in student years, and more importantly when I was training for ministry. Even though I didn't read all its documents, they were influential in re-inforcing and stimulating the Anglican approach to worship, pastoral ministry and mission, and have done a great deal in practical outcomes to draw our churches closer together in witness and service in the forty years since they were published.

We were home again just after ten. As we got off the coach and said goodnight I discovered that I'm meant to be preaching at tomorrow's re-run in English of the Unity Week service at St Andrew's. A busy day tomorrow then.